No doubt a investigation needs to be done to see what went wrong in the GULF as to the oil spill. Still you will find few people in Louisiana that want to halt off shore drilling. Incidents like this are rare and in the end it is far safer than all these oil tankers going all over the place.

However we are already hearing STOP DRILLING SEE!!

This is the problem. These revenues(that not only are crucial for Louisiana) also are going to be playing a huge role in America biggest National environmental, national Security and economic crisis. Crisis. That is Louisiana Coastal Erosion. While oil soaked birds are tragic they are rare. However there will be no worries of oil soaked Coastline if there is no COAST!! Which is happening.

Louisiana voters approved a constitutional amendment dedicating 100% of state revenue flowing from oil and gas production off the outer continental shelf to coastal restoration and flood protection. The U.S. Congress has to all practical purposes limited this money to no more than $300 million a year, even though such states as New Mexico, Wyoming, and Colorado get many times that from revenues derived from federal land. (The justification for giving states money from federal property is to reimburse them for environmental damage and infrastructure development, but obviously none of them have anything like the environmental damage Louisiana suffers.) But no appreciable money starts flowing until 2017.

Now Palin alone is of course not the cause of this but I think her role was significant.

One point not mentioned. There has been a myth that conservatives men would not vote for a woman. I have have always thought this was false. What we saw at her rallies was lot of conservative men. Including a lot of conservative men bringing their daughters to see her as an example. This might have caused some people to shake off the what I have believed is a falsehood.

Would you support deportation of natural-born American citizens that are the children of illegal aliens," Hunter was asked. "I would have to, yes," Hunter said. "... We simply cannot afford what we're doing right now," he said. "... It takes more than just walking across the border to become an American citizen. It's what's in our souls. ..." Hunter made his comments at a "tea party" rally in the San Diego County city of Ramona over the weekend. You can see a video of his remarks below.

Needless to say this is not helpful and is one reason these debates gets out of control. Before you know it this will be on every Latino Radio station .

Of course why stop at children? I mean there will be outrage over that. Why not deport those people that were children of illegals and now can vote!!! Therefore through the pure poltical power you can rid of the opposition.

In fact why stop at the legal status. Bobby Jindal was born of two non United States Citizens. Shall we strip him too. What about Michelle Malkin?

Senate Judiciary Votes to Require Televised Supreme Court Proceedings The Senate Judiciary Committee approved, 13-6, a bill (S 446) that would require Supreme Court proceedings to be televised, but would allow exceptions if televised coverage would violate the due process rights of any party involved. The panel also approved, 13-6, a bill (S 657) that would authorize U.S. appellate and district court judges to allow electronic media coverage — including television — of court proceedings, unless coverage would violate the due process rights of any party.

I am just awed at Mr Wisdom down there or to be more precise "down under". As a former Protestant that worshiped and lived in a somewhat Chruch structure he envisions I have to tell you the same problem of sex abuse was there and is there.

Also I ask again!! Where is the talk of the Catholic laity abuse crisis. We know looking at numbers in the general population and add to that more lay involvement in the Church we should be hearing more about it. Where does that fit into his view of the world.

But there is a serious point hon. Listen. Why don't these people want to have a traditional cope and miter? It's because they hate tradition, that's why. They wear radical clothes because they are radical people. They wear clothes that express themselves rather than expressing the office they hold. I remember one time in Barcelona we get this young bishop who said he didn't want to wear a miter and a cope and ring and all the bishop's special vestments because he doesn't want to be special and he doesn't think he is any better than anybody else.Mgr. Quixote, who was my professor of Ecclesiastical Haberdashery at Salamanca University took him aside and said, "Your Grace, with the greatest respect, everybody already agrees with you. They don't think you're so special either." The new bishop kind of misses the point hon because he says, "Really! Then I won't wear them. I think they embarrass me. I don't want them to be looking at me."So Monsignor Quixote says, "What I mean is they don't think it's all about you. They want to see the Bishop. They are not coming to see you. They are coming to see the Church and the Bishop stands for the Church. The Bishop's robes do something very important your grace. They block you out. With any luck you will get your wish and no one will see you at all. Then when you're gone the next bishop will wear the same cope and miter and they won't see him either."Lucky this priest is pretty smart, so he says, "You mean instead of the fancy robes making me special they actually make me not so special?""You got it!" says Monsignor. "The splendid robes are not because you're a splendid person, but because the office of the bishop is splendid. The better bishop you are the more you will forget about yourself."So that's the problem with these robes that are 'creative'. They draw attention to themselves and they draw attention to the people wearing them and the people who made them. Listen hon. These vestments say, "Look at me. I'm radical. I'm a woman bishop. I'm something special. I am going to change the world." It is saying, "Women priests are good. People who don't like them are bad."This is why these vestments are so bad. Because they are preaching to me. Good vestments preach by being humble. The only thing you should notice is that they are made from the finest materials with the finest workmanship. It's simple hon. Vestments should not send a message.You want to send a message? Send a telegram.

Maybe the Hon can get a job at U.S. Catholic

Further she notes at Mantilla Talks Vestments she says in part:Every kind of symbol that is preachy is a mistake. All these vestment makers want to be clever and do something smart. Forget it hon. Here is a good rule of thumb: too clever is dumb. When I was doing my degree in Ecclesiastical Haberdashery at Salamanca University I learned something every seminarian should learn: "Vestments should not preach, except by the quality of materials used and the skill and prayerful dedication of the craftsman." Yes hon, that's right. Vestments don't preach. Priests preach. You see, the vestment should complement the divine liturgy. It should beautify and reflect the beauty of the divine sacrifice.If someone goes away from Holy Mass and says to me, "You know Mantilla, those vestments were simply gorgeous--so creative!" I say to myself, something is wrong. It's okay for vestments to be gorgeous, but creative? I don't think so. They get too 'creative' and they draw attention to themselves, you know? They should not do that. They were probably made by someone who was trying to show off. That's not good. Listen, hon, Low key is the thing. Low key. Keep it dignified. Keep it classy.You know?

Don't play it!! Especially don't play it this year when the White House and the leadership in the Congress have no real intention of passing a immigration bill this year. In fact there has been no work done on it all hardly which means it is too late to get anything passed this year.

Does anyone think the Unions (whom can't get their Card Check bill passed) are going to be gung ho for immigration reform?

They are playing the right like fools to divert attention that they don't really care to spend the political capital on the issue and to divert attention from other problems. It appears to me to be working.

Shmuley will be asking the Pope for his international support in the ‘Turn Friday Night into Family Night’ initiative, which encourages parents to spend Friday nights at home with their family in order to give children one uninterrupted night focused on them. “I hope the Pope joins me in support of ‘Turn Friday into Family Night,’ which I believe is a program that will positively impact the world’s families, of any religious denomination” says Rabbi Shmuley....

We learn details of what happened

“In addition, Your holiness, the dual clock face is a symbol of my request that you please join us in establishing a global family dinner night which we call, ‘Turn Friday Night into Family Night.’ It involves what we call the triple two. Two hours of uninterrupted time that parents give their kids, inviting two guests, just as I am your guest today, and discussing two important subjects.”While I said this Pope Benedict again nodded.I concluded, ‘Your holiness, it’s so important that our two religions work together on this.’ He said warmly, ‘We will work together. We will work together.’ He held my hand while we spoke. The watch we gave the Pope as a gift has special resonance because the owner, Will Stein, is an orthodox German convert to Judaism.

What about the 8th Sacrament of Louisiana Catholics. That being Louisiana Friday Night High School Football.

I think the Catholic League in New Orleans will object!! Why can't we have Family Night IN THE STANDS!!

Robert Hicks, Leader in Armed Rights Group, Dies at 81Someone had called to say the Ku Klux Klan was coming to bomb Robert Hicks’s house. The police said there was nothing they could do. It was the night of Feb. 1, 1965, in Bogalusa, La. The Klan was furious that Mr. Hicks, a black paper mill worker, was putting up two white civil rights workers in his home. It was just six months after three young civil rights workers had been murdered in Philadelphia, Miss.

Mr. Hicks and his wife, Valeria, made some phone calls. They found neighbors to take in their children, and they reached out to friends for protection. Soon, armed black men materialized. Nothing happened.

Less than three weeks later, the leaders of a secretive, paramilitary organization of blacks called the Deacons for Defense and Justice visited Bogalusa. It had been formed in Jonesboro, La., in 1964 mainly to protect unarmed civil rights demonstrators from the Klan. After listening to the Deacons, Mr. Hicks took the lead in forming a Bogalusa chapter, recruiting many of the men who had gone to his house to protect his family and guests.

Mr. Hicks died of cancer at his home in Bogalusa on April 13 at the age of 81, his wife said. He was one of the last surviving Deacon leaders.

But his role in the civil rights movement went beyond armed defense in a corner of the Jim Crow South. He led daily protests month after month in Bogalusa — then a town of 23,000, of whom 9,000 were black — to demand rights guaranteed by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And he filed suits that integrated schools and businesses, reformed hiring practices at the mill and put the local police under a federal judge’s control.

It was his leadership role with the Deacons that drew widest note, however. The Deacons, who grew to have chapters in more than two dozen Southern communities, veered sharply from the nonviolence preached by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They carried guns, with the mission to protect against white aggression, citing the Second Amendment.

And they used them. A Bogalusa Deacon pulled a pistol in broad daylight during a protest march in 1965 and put two bullets into a white man who had attacked him with his fists. The man survived. A month earlier, the first black deputy sheriff in the county had been assassinated by whites.

When James Farmer, national director of the human rights group the Congress of Racial Equality, joined protests in Bogalusa, one of the most virulent Klan redoubts, armed Deacons provided security.

Dr. King publicly denounced the Deacons’ “aggressive violence.” And Mr. Farmer, in an interview with Ebony magazine in 1965, said that some people likened the Deacons to the K.K.K. But Mr. Farmer also pointed out that the Deacons did not lynch people or burn down houses. In a 1965 interview with The New York Times Magazine, he spoke of CORE and the Deacons as “a partnership of brothers.”

In July 1965, escalating hostilities between the Deacons and the Klan in Bogalusa provoked the federal government to use Reconstruction-era laws to order local police departments to protect civil rights workers. It was the first time the laws were used in the modern civil rights era, Mr. Hill said.

Mr. Hicks was repeatedly jailed for protesting. He watched as his 15-year-old son was bitten by a police dog. The Klan displayed a coffin with his name on it beside a burning cross. He persisted, his wife said, for one reason: “It was something that needed to be done.”

Robert Hicks was born in Mississippi on Feb. 20, 1929. His father, Quitman, drove oxen to harvest trees for the paper mill. He played football on a state championship high school team and later for the semi-professional Bogalusa Bushmen.He was known for his generosity: at the Baptist congregation where he was a deacon, he bought new suits for poor members. As the first black supervisor at the mill, he helped a young man amass enough overtime to buy the big car he dreamed of. Children all over town called him Dad, his son Charles said.

A leader in the local N.A.A.C.P. and his segregated union, Mr. Hicks was the logical choice to head the Bogalusa Civic and Voters League when it was formed to lead the local civil rights effort. He was first president, then vice president of the Deacons in Bogalusa.Besides Valeria Hicks, his wife of 62 years, and his son Charles, Mr. Hicks is survived by three other sons, Gregory, Robert Lawrence and Darryl; his daughter, Barbara Hicks Collins; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

By 1968, the Deacons had pretty much vanished. In time they were “hardly a footnote in most books on the civil rights movement,” Mr. Hill said. He attributed this to a “mythology” that the rights movement was always nonviolent.Mrs. Hicks said she was glad it was not.

“I became very proud of black men,” she said. “They didn’t bow down and scratch their heads. They stood up like men.”

Lord help us when the Louisiana Legislature is in session. Someone sent me this email from the CCA

"If you like the idea of putting politics smack in the middle of the process of setting rules for hunting and fishing, then you’ll LOVE SB 339 by Sen. Rob Marionneaux of Gross Tete. Last week the Senate Natural Resources Committee voted 4-2 in favor of Marionneaux’s bill to replace all members of the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission with legislators. The seven LWFC members are presently appointed by the governor. CCA supports the Wildlife and Fisheries Commission and believes its members have done a good job of managing our resources. CCA joins LDWF Secretary Robert Barham in opposing SB 339. In testimony to the Natural Resources Committee, Barham said: “We are to preserve, protect and conserve the natural resources, the wildlife. Our duty is not to give the maximum kill or take. It is to make sure future generations have those resources available to them.” The Marionneaux bill is a constitutional amendment that requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature and approval of voters. Help us stop a political takeover of the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission. Contact your senator today and strongly urge him or her to vote against SB 339. The measure could come up for a Senate vote as early as Wednesday, so it’s important to contact your senator ASAP" .

The Anchoress that actually has readers has gone into this debate again. I feel for her.

The immigration debate and all its facets is so depressing. It is more emotional than debates over gay marriage, abortion, and other hot button social issues.

The problem is for us folks in the "middle" we get it from all sides. The comment sections are comprised mostly of two folks

If you are concerned about illegal immigration you are a racist

and

If you are for immigration reform you are a deluded fool and a quisling and are for "open borders".

This is also a time where the "right" starts a little Catholic bashing of their own I am sad to say. Which is strange since most Evangelicals and Protestants Church leadership has the same position as the Catholic Church.

Here is what the Anchoress has to say at Immigration & the Storm Next TimeMeanwhile the Democrats and the press (if I am not redundant) understand how well they played the immigration card in 2006 -getting the right all hopped up in May to reap the rewards in November- and so they will be repeating that gambit – manufacturing parades and outrage once again, as they did before. The charges of “racist nazis” will fly; the press will fan the flames, and the situation will become toxic. I expect that the right -which has done a very good job of ignoring deliberate provocation up to now- will end up losing its composure in this debate, and once that happens, once they let fly with their passions, they will be defeated. The nation may well get behind these new laws but it will not get behind a movement that they perceive to be hysterical, and that is how the right -with the help of multimedia and a few predictable extremists- will be perceived.In 2006 the right responded to the immigration street theater (mostly organized by A.N.S.W.E.R) with an extreme notion that involved somehow “shipping all illegals back” and rejecting any-and-all plans that included a grandfathering-in of citizens, or what they referred to as “shamnesty.” Demanding a sudden and perfect solution to the problem after 30 years of relative neglect, the right chose doing nothing at all over compromising with President Bush, and so now the issue is still alive, still a potent election tool, and it is in the hands of an opposition that has already proved itself to be ruthlessly willing to do whatever it takes to win, and wholly disinterested in what polls may say. The political right is not wrong to be concerned about the illegal immigration issue. And it has some valid points to make. But it rather squandered its opportunity to do something comprehensive four years ago. I doubt very much that anything that passes through congress at this point will make the right happy.
So, yes, Neo is correctly sensing a calm before a storm, I think. And this storm is going to be very destructive, indeed.

Well you can bet some don't want to hear that. However everyone on the left and the right are playing their roles.

What gets me about Obama's criticism is he helped kill immigration reform in 2007!!!! Yet he will get a pass from the left and on the right they will do their part to make Obama "open borders". Which is of course false. Obama gets away with not only killing immigration reform but he still gets to blame others and benefit from it.

But we all have our roles to play in this charade and everyone and I mean everyone is doing their best Oscar performance.

Update - I posted this in the comment section
Who will get the best Oscar performance in their roles. The right or the left? Both are playing their roles to a TEE. These are the facts We know and have knon for some time there will be no immigration bill this year We know that Obama helped kill immigration reform in 2007 We know that Obama's Chief of Staff has been very cool to the idea of immigration reform which has inflamed immigration advocates We know there has been rising anger with Obama over the immigration issue from Immigration Advocates including that deportations are going ahead full speed We know that Obama has suffered from the Health care debate To the rescue is the AZ State legislature which has produced a Law that will be tied up in the Federal Courts for some time no doubt So Obama gets to fool again the folks on the left. On the right we see people trying to make Obama a friend of illegal aliens. We are no longer discussing the Health Care bill Obama gets the fact that he does not have the votes to get his Cap and Trade bill passed of the view of the media Oh and yes it gives an opportunity for moderate democrats that went out on a limb and voted for the Health Care bill a chance to do a public vocal stance against their President on immigration to appease certain factions and thus recover some votes. Elements on the right will play their part with some not helpful rethoric that will inflame Latinos. WIN WIN WIN all over something that is going no where this year or next year.

“The royal family is not without its quirks. When Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, came to visit us, they requested glasses of ice before we began a long receiving line. The staff dutifully produced them, and the prince removed a flask from his pocket and added to each a small splash of what I presume was straight gin, so that they might be fortified before the hour of shaking hands.” (p. 296)

Yes I know many of my readers are all on board with this. Well that is fine. I just find this counterproductive and in some ways mean and as to my own moral code of how I see the world just cannot do it.. However I am not going to rant on people that think this is great partly because I hope this goes away.

I also don't think this is a great idea while we have significant troops engaging in active operations in Islamic countries

If British folks care what this redneck Louisiana USA guy says. TO be honest I know nothing of the race though lots of Catholic UK blogs are talking about it. So I will try to get up to date

However I am a Republican and Republicans are supposed to like Tories since they are our political cousins. It is time for a CHANGE and good gosh with Obama in office over here we really need to balance him out.

Hopefully we will do our part and send a Republican over there that he can talk too in about two years!!

With all due respect to Cornell Clinical Law Professor and conservative blogger William Jacobson whom I like and read and link I think he is flat out wrong. I am also a tad disturbed that Instapundit that perhaps is the most widely read by blog by a lawyer seems all not too concerned. Yes I know he is not a big immigration reform guy but still!!

Mirrors of Justice has a good short post on this at Arizona Immigration Law. Now what is disturbing about all this among other things is the whole Citizens Law Suit angle for those State Govt agencies that are not doing their "job". My friends if you can't see the disaster that is coming out of that then you are blind.

Do people want to go down that road. I know that sounds GREAT !! Hell yes we can sue the Police if they don't arrest those maybe illegals down the street but are people really really thinking this through? It sounds like a perfect prescription for MOB rule!! What else shall we sue the police for and other agencies for non executing the law. A good part of police work is needed discretion in making certain calls. That seems to be flying out the window.

Why stop at illegals? Why not expand it to all crimes. What is the justification not to do that. It seems in close cases the budget strapped police office might decide with a spat between you and your neighbor where is conflicting stories he might as well just take you down to the police station so they go get sued.

Well I think they have their opening here. The Episcopal Bishop of Georgia is speaking . See SPRAY HITTER via MCJ.

The Georgia Bishop gives some rather bad and misleading history there too IMHO.

That being said I can't help to think that outside some trendy Episcopal Churches this is going to go down very well in southern GA.

Now as I have mentioned Catholics sometimes have the misconception that all Episcopals are Anglo Catholic leaning. This is false. Different regions seems to have different ethos. From High Anglo Catholic Church to Low. From a Catholic understanding of the Anglican Faith to an Evangelical and Reformed view.

For instance I get the impression (though I am not sure) that the very Orthodox South Carolina Episcopal Diocese is not very Anglo Catholic leaning.

What is it in Georgia? Well I don't know. Episcopal Church Georgia Is divided into two Dioceses. The Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta (Atlanta Northern Georgia) and the Diocese of Georgia (the south and taking in part of northeast Georgia).

The Catholic Church there also has two Diocese . That is the BOOMING DYNAMIC Archdiocese of Atlanta we read so much about. Then like the Episcopals across the street they have a Diocese headquartered in Savannah. Things could be going gangbusters in Savannah too I just don't know. Further I am not sure how much overlap land wise there is between the two Catholic Dioceses and the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.

Regardless in the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia it appears the writing is on the wall and at some point we shall have two competing jurisdictions of Anglicans. So Catholics might as well start making their appeal now to those Anglicans that are reconsidering their position and might be open to new Anglican Catholic structure. I mean if there is going to be a defacto schism anyway there is no reason for us to sit on the sidelines.

In the end it never hurts to give the invitation and show that they would be welcomed. The South I feel is where we can see results so I am hoping the Catholic powers that be are doing something there.

Here is the paragraph which followed the offending words. The complete letter is available in French at the magazine Golias and in English on Wikipedia:

For the relationship between priests and their bishop is not professional but a sacramental relationship which forges very special bonds of spiritual paternity. The matter was amply taken up again by the last Council, by the 1971 Synod of Bishops and that of 1991. The bishop has other means of acting, as the Conference of French Bishops recently restated; but a bishop cannot be required to make the denunciation himself. In all civilised legal systems it is acknowledged that close relations have the possibility of not testifying against a direct relative.“The bishop has other ways of acting”: in other words, Castrillon was not saying that bishops should conceal the crimes of priests, but that they themselves should not hand the offender over to the authorities. He would probably encourage the victim or the victim’s families to report the crime.

Is this a realistic policy? Perhaps experience has showed that it is not, especially with recidivist paedophiles. Perhaps, too, victims are psychologically incapable of denouncing their tormenter. Perhaps some bishops would not be courageous enough to engineer a denunciation by a third party. But that single sentence should not be used to smear a man courageous and zealous enough to seek the conversion of Colombia’s vilest drug lord.

Now that put things in a different viewpoint. You might disagree with that but I think here we are getting to what was the Cardinals and perhaps even John Paul the II's concern. That is the issue in the background here dealing with perhaps with repressive Govts.

As Allen points out in his piece:prelates such as Castrillón are also old enough to remember what happened in regimes hostile to the church—whether police states of Latin America, or Communist governments in Eastern Europe—where clergy were encouraged to inform on one another in order to weaken the church from within, and where refusal to do so was considered a mark of heroic virtue. (Bishops from former Soviet states and from Latin America have sometimes warned against an uncritical embrace of "mandatory reporter" requirements for exactly that reason—it’s a sort of Anglo-Saxon delusion, they say, to believe one can always trust the police and the courts.).Now the communist days seem like a million years ago but they were really not. Needless to say in Vietnam and CHINA they are still going on full force. Further things in Central and South American that show that the situation have not changed at all in some places.

So we have two concerns here. People like the cardinal quite recall the bad ole days. It is not ancient history to them. It is not clear what John Paul knew about this letter or what he thought. One can see though him recalling the days when the Communist agents from the KGB to their Eastern European counterparts very much encouraged Priest to be in fact on their PAYROLL.So we do need to be careful at always looking at the worldwide Church and its experience.

I have a feeling this was what was at issue and not so much issues of confession(It is not clear to me if that was a real issue at all in the French case that is at dispute).

However it does give us pause to look at the entire context perhaps before rushing to all sort of judgments.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Not sure how this peace process thing is going to work. On one side wwe have a powerless Govt that can't enforce a Peace deal. On the other side we have a Govt(Israel) that can enforce a Peace deal on their side but distrust of America Foreign policy is at a all time high it appears. A perfect disaster. See Obama Gets Thumbs Down — Again — in Israel

I have talked about how false moral panics are being generated as to the Catholic Priest abuse scandal. Here we have a situation where yes there have been some tragic cases with some teens that were abused or harassed or insulted etc etc etc. However the response here to this is a horrific overreach in my opinion potentially making a whole much of conduct criminal.

New things you learn everyday. From the Instapundit:ABOUT 20,000 PEOPLE (INCLUDING THE INSTA-DAUGHTER) ATTENDED Knoxville’s Rossini Festival, while Jack Neely notes that country music may have started out as a backlash to Knoxville’s enthusiasm for opera: “By the early 1880s, Knoxville was hosting extravagant ‘Music Festivals,’ held every spring. Touting itself as ‘the little Paris of the United States,’ Knoxville emphasized European opera above all else, concentrated around Staub’s Opera House, which was on the southeast corner of Gay Street and Cumberland. Significant stars of opera and classical music from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston would take the train to Knoxville for a pleasant weekend of music, some of it outdoors at Chilhowee Park. . . . Back then, opera was believed to inflame the passions of hot-blooded youth, and they weren’t crazy about their youngsters putting on European airs. In May, 1883, some older folks staged a sort of anti-opera counter festival, featuring some down-home fiddle music on an afternoon at Staub’s when there were no sopranos scheduled. It’s the earliest example of country music being played on a public stage I’ve been able to find.”

I don't see there and I suspect even advocates of gay marriage do not see it all either.

The TEC needs to be honest with what is their most up front justification.

The Lord our God has picked the TEC to be as they describe themselves as the Prophetic voice to the world on this.

Now that is problematic. In a sense you are taking on powers that the Bishop of Rome and all the Bishops united with him would NEVER DREAM OF HAVING. You are in a sense advocating for a teaching power and binding authority of the Church that has been given that is unheard of.

So sorry the Church, Scripture, the Church Fathers, and in fact the entire Christian Community has been in opposition to GOD himself on this matter for 1950 years!!. In fact not only is gay Marraige ok but to oppose it is a sin and a social injustice that screams to Heaven itself to be correct

In fact it sort of Latter Day Saints Like. Oh sorry the President of the Saints had a revelation and now polygamy is to be outlawed and decalred wrong . Of course it is acceptable in some corners to go HA HA to Mormons when they say this but for some reason the TEC is getting away with it.

However in effect is that not really what the TEC is doing. So if that is going to be the logic they need to start working on the apologetics , theology, and scripture behind it.

And the Valley Shook I think summed up the mood why this loss hurt a good bit at That Sinking Feeling . Poor Les Miles in the fall. LES YOU CANNOT TO LOSE TO OLE MISS THERE WILL BE RIOTS AFTER THIS.

What makes this loss really bad is we lost all three games by a combined total of 4 runs!!! I agree with the LSU Coach it just seemed like this weekend where we were snake bit. WHY IS GOD SO DISPLEASED WITH US!!!

TIGER FANS WE CAN GET OUR REVENGE IN THE SEC TOURNAMENT.

Oh well lets this depressing post out of the way. Lets Give Ole Miss their DUE this weekend.

If you are being considered then you REALLY REALLY don't talk about it to the Press. At Contentions:Do we really think Obama is going to pick a non-judge to go toe-to-toe with Justices Alito, Scalia, and Roberts? “Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) says she’s once again on President Obama’s short list for appointment to the Supreme Court. In an interview with CNN, the term-limited governor says she has talked with people in the Obama administration about the upcoming nomination to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.” Well, it would nail down that all-important Canadian-American vote.

I will have more thoughts later but please note no mention of the Oakland case is given and the problems with the New York Times Reporting of that.

I also know the "Op-ed" NYT section is different from the news department but they surely let Dowd run free there and had no comment on how she she did not put the Ratzinger's quotes in proper context so as to not mislead.

The problem is the stories based in the USA is there is no context given. I am not exactly sure why we are hung up on issues of laicization which is pretty much just officially for Canon Law persons moving someone from the Priest to the lay state though for all purposes they do remain a Priest because the Church cannot change that.

The "defrocking" occurs when they are removed from public ministry for all purposes. Something that the TIMES still does not make clear.

In his defense of the Times he does not also address the obvious. That the Vatican was facing real time troubles with an offical trial as to the Wisconsin case.

Criminal and civil cases can go on for years in the Secualr system but for some reason people are shocked that these things took time as to Lacizations(which I am not sure why we are getting hung up on that) in the Church.

I love this part:In 1996, more than 20 years after Murphy moved away, the archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, wrote to Ratzinger, saying he had just learned that the priest had solicited sex in the confessional while at the school, a particularly grievous offense, and asked how he should proceed. Although there was no response, Weakland started an ecclesiastical trial but then worried about the church’s statute of limitations.....But Murphy appealed to Ratzinger. The allegations were more than 25 years old, he was 72 and in ill health, and he had repented, he wrote. Bertone then suggested measures short of expulsion. Weakland said that, at a meeting in the Vatican, he failed to persuade Bertone and other officials to let the trial go forward, and it was halted in 1998, shortly before Murphy died. The documents support this account.

Again what is not being said here. First I find it very ironic that WEAKLAND is being portrayed as some HERO HERE. The Victims were very upset just a couple of years ago that Weakland was trying to "blame the Vatican".

Weakland knew of these offenses it appears way before and just got the Vatican involved when it appeared there would be lawsuits. He wanted to salvage things for PR so lets move him officially to the LAY state.

Again it is telling the Times ombudsman does not address their handling in all forms of the Oakland case which was very very troubling.

The Catholic Peter: Passionate ExtremesCentral to the belief system of every Catholic is the identification of the apostle Peter as the first Pope, and in that first Holy Father we see displayed in full all the virtues and vices of the Church of Rome. Peter is a passionate man of almost violent extremes. Out of all the disciples, it is he (inspired by the Holy Spirit) who is the first to recognize Jesus as Messiah. In response, Christ praises him highly and even promises to place in his hands the “keys of the kingdom” (Matt 16:15–20). And yet but a brief time later the same Peter who boldly proclaims Christ’s status as “the Son of the living God” attempts to prevent him from fulfilling the Father’s plan. The confessing disciple now receives one of Jesus’ strongest rebukes: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men” (Matt 16:23; NIV throughout)..........Throughout her long and bumpy history, the Roman Catholic Church has been the church that has most fully engaged the world around her. While Orthodoxy withdraws and Protestantism divides, The Catholic Church wrestles and grapples and gets her hands dirty. She makes mistakes (lots of them) but presses on nevertheless—ever struggling and yet ever maintaining her integrity and identity. Like Peter, she grows and learns without ever quite losing that rashness and impulsiveness that defines her. When God changed Jacob’s name to Israel (“he who wrestles with God”), he surely meant it as both a compliment and a criticism. The Israelites born out of Jacob’s loins proved (like Peter and the Catholic Church) to be wrestlers with God: now embracing his Word and with it setting the world on fire; now resisting that same Word and running after the world. When at her best, the Catholic Church (like Peter at Pentecost) stands boldly before the crowd proclaiming the message that is a stumbling block to the world. At her worst, she elicits the very rebuke that Jesus gave to Peter: “you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” Yet still, ever and always, she persists and remains herself— a rock thrown in the river to trouble the waters.............

One of the reasons that John Henry Cardinal Newman converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism was because he feared that the Bible alone was not enough to stand against what he called (in Chapter V of Apologia Pro Vita Sua) the “wild living intellect of man.” To combat this “universal solvent,” God ordained and appointed an institution (the Roman Catholic Church) “happily adapted to be a working instrument . . . for smiting hard and throwing back the immense energy of the aggressive, capricious, untrustworthy intellect.” The non-Catholic attacks Rome for being stubborn and inflexible and slow to change, but to level this (often just) criticism is simultaneously to praise Rome for that inner, God-given nature which she shares with her first Pontiff.............God has, I would submit, chosen the Catholic Church to keep alive the spirit and witness of Peter in all of its paradoxical extremes. If she is to complete her mission, if she is to continue to stand (to quote Newman again) as “proof against the energy of human skepticism,” if she is successfully to rescue the freedom of thought “from its own suicidal excesses,” then she is going to have to be a bit stubborn and stiff-necked. That is not to absolve her of guilt when her stubbornness falls into pride and sin and disobedience, but it is to assert that her flaws and frequent slips are part and parcel of that divine mission which she, and she alone, has been given the grace to fulfill. Just as every parish needs at least one Peter to be both its rock and its rabble-rouser, so the Universal Body of Christ needs its Catholic branch, which both centers and disturbs it................I think there is a lot insight there.

The day the Antichrist is ripped from his papal throne, true religion will guide the world. Or perhaps it’s the day the last priest is gutted, and his entrails used to strangle the last king, as Voltaire demanded. Yes, that’s when we will see at last the reign of bright, clean, enlightened reason—the release of mankind from the shadows of medieval superstition. War will end. The proletariat will awaken from its opiate dream. The oppression of women will stop. And science at last will be free from the shackles of Rome.For almost 500 years now, Catholicism has been an available answer, a mystical key, to that deep, childish, and existentially compelling question: Why aren’t we there yet? Why is progress still unfinished? Why is promise still unfulfilled? Why aren’t we perfect? Why aren’t we changed?Despite our rejection of the past, the future still hasn’t arrived. Despite our advances, corruption continues. It needs an explanation. It requires a response. And in every modernizing movement—from Protestant Reformers to French Revolutionaries, Communists to Freudians, Temperance Leaguers and suffragettes to biotechnologists and science-fiction futurists—someone in despair eventually stumbles on the answer: We have been thwarted by the Catholic Church...............

As in all things the events in that area show us what is important. AMAZING but Oxford Mississippi was nto touched storms that hit everywhere around it and sadly brough death to people in surrounding towns.

In the first game the EPIC pitching duel between Ole Miss and LSU was needless to a bust. Both Pitchers had one of their worst games of the seasons and were pulled quickly. Sadly in game one LSU bats could not make much of Ole Miss's Pomeranz woes but Ole Miss batters made a lot of HAY out of Ranaudo's woes which was the key. LSU chipped away at the lead but had dug themselves too much of hole. Game Two was much more closer (LSU had a 5 run lead at one time) but the game went into extra innings and LSU lost.

The SKY is not Falling but we have concerns. I am not worried about Anthony Ranaudo next week. Next weeks series is critical and no we are not out of the winning the SEC yet. However we really need to win today.

I actually like the guy. I never supported him when he was in the State Senate but I thought he was a good fit for the Public Service Commision.

By the way I agree with My Bossier that the Lt Gov position should not be eliminated. I think both Blanco and Mitch did a lot of good in that position. Plus it is a office where a State wide elected offical often goes in the rural areas of the State. That is a plus.

Chances are that anti Catholics are using some faults in the system to make this happen and Facebook is just behind the curve on responding and looking at it. Still it is troubling how one group can shut down a voice in the public square using these tactics. Facebook needs to fix their procedures so this does not happen.

WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., got in a heated and unusual exchange on the Senate floor Thursday with a North Dakota Democrat complaining about Vitter’s hold on the promotion of a general with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Sen. Byron Dorgan reminded Vitter that Congress has allocated $14 billion for corps work in Louisiana, indicating Vitter should instead show gratitude.“My friend is fast wearing out his welcome,” said Dorgan, who kept pointing his finger at Vitter. “My friend might want to learn the words thank you, thank you to this chamber.” (I WANT TO SCREAM RIGHT NOW AND DO BAD BAD THINGS TO SEN DORGAN THROUGH MY COMPUTER SCREEN)

Vitter refused to back down, saying that his hold on the promotion of Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh to major general was warranted because the corps has failed to move on critical Louisiana flood control projects and has repeatedly failed to meet report deadlines.

“I’m disappointed my distinguished colleague is continuing to blindly, in my opinion, be a fierce defender of a bureaucracy that is clearly broken,” Vitter said.Vitter has had a hold on Walsh, a 30-year Army veteran, for six months, outlining nine issues that he said the corps has failed to address.

The agency has failed to form a coastal Louisiana ecosystem and protection and restoration task force and the Louisiana Water Resources Council, an independent agency approved by Congress to review corps projects in the state, Vitter said.

The corps has failed to do a risk-study analysis on the outflow canals where the failure led to 80 percent of the damage from Katrina, Vitter said.

The corps has also failed to move on creating the Morganza-to-the-Gulf storm protection system for Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes, a project that has been approved by Congress three times since 1992, he said.

“Senator Dorgan is anxious for that promotion for the pristine corps leadership,” Vitter said.“Well, I’m anxious for this important work to protect Louisiana citizens.”Dorgan noted that it was not his custom to criticize another senator on the floor.Dorgan accused Vitter of using Walsh as a pawn.“Let me say I don’t dislike my colleague from Louisiana,” Dorgan said. “I intensely dislike what he is doing.”

Vitter retorted that he has thanked Congress repeatedly for its help, but chided Dorgan for casually noting that the corps makes mistakes.

“I do disagree with the senator in sort of lightly tripping over as a minor mistake design flaws that caused 80 percent of the catastrophic flooding of the city of New Orleans,” Vitter said.Vitter has no intention of backing down on the matter, noting that Walsh is one of the corps’ top nine leaders, he said.“I will continue to fight to fundamentally change that bureaucracy,” Vitter said.